


What Was Lost

by Fierceawakening



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 12:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6238261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fierceawakening/pseuds/Fierceawakening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A re-work of some stuff I've previously written about the history before the Golden Age. A victorious Megatron ponders the legends, rumors, and snatches of history he used to forge his Revolution in the beginning -- and how to recreate it, on the pristine but empty world he's finally won.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Was Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I've always felt that a lot of sci-fi makes analogies to racism and misses aspects like cultural erasure and cultural genocide, and that's part of why some racism analogies fall flat. I've always felt like Transformers seemed like a great place to explore that, what with the two factions. I know the "warbuild vs. civilian" headcanon is unpopular, in part because of unfortunate implications. But I always thought it gave a unique starting point for questions not just of caste but of culture and history. So here's my take.

_Why do I know so little?_

He had the presence of mind not to growl it aloud. And the presence of mind not to slam his hand down on the ancient datapad he was reading.

But the table fared less well. He opened his hand and dug his claws into the metal. They scratched deep. Little sparks rose from where they bit into it.

_Why do I know so little?_

_I should know more than this._

_And should have known from the beginning._

The knowledge should have been there, stored in his databanks, from the moment the Allspark had given him life. The history of his world, his people, his kind. The names of the great generals, the tales of their deeds.

The history of the Empire they’d created. A time when Cybertron had risen, and conquered, and ruled. When beings throughout the galaxy had heard their names, and envied.

And seen the swirl of a space bridge open, and feared.

But now all he had were these few datapads. And a throbbing pain in his processor from trying to cram as much of the information they held into his mind as possible.

_I should have known their stories. I should have heard their tales._

_I should have risen to my place among them, inspired by their legend._

_Instead, this._ He stared down at the datapad as if by sheer force of will he could absorb what it contained. But the glyphs wavered in his vision, burning symbols he barely had the power to decode.

He pulled his claws out of the channel they’d dug in the surface of the table and gripped the datapad, as if the touch of his hands could force it to offer up its secrets.

_Instead, this._

Instead, the only history he knew was the history he’d been fed by mechs who called themselves his betters. And what little he could force into his mind through sessions like this.

Instead the throbbing pain in his mind, night after night. And the marks of his own claws in the table. It should have been sacred too, forged as it was by the power of the Omega Lock itself. Even now, the wound his hands had left in it glittered, like a vein of ore in the mines of Tarn.

Where all of this began.

Where those mechs who’d called themselves his betters, his rulers, had made a beast of him.

And turned even his life now – the life of a conqueror, a monster, a king – into a life of catching up to them.

As though they’d ever deserved to be more than he was.

They’d called themselves chosen of Primus. Mechs who used the lineage of the Primes and the blessings of the Matrix to justify their claims. He’d believed them once himself, sought the Matrix in hopes it would prove his revolution just.

He’d never found it. But a former friend had – once he’d had the blessings of his enemies.

_Did that make you the Chosen One, Optimus Prime? It remade your frame. It gave you a new name._

_Did that honor you, old friend? Or did it erase you?_

They said the Cybertronian Empire had been cruel. Pitiless, corrupt, and prideful. That it had fallen to teach Cybertron a lesson. To make peace, not war. To listen to the calmest and the kindest. To never reach beyond what Primus had decreed.

The old space bridges had fallen into disrepair. Who needed them, without an empire to govern? Who needed them, with a Golden Age at home?

I should have learned to fight singing their songs. Known strategy thanks to their tales. Sought to match their deeds with my own – and learned how to surpass them.

Cybertron. His home. A world sacred to Primus. Or so the stories told it.

More likely than that, Primus’s body itself, as Earth was the body of Unicron. With energon his blood, as dark energon was Unicron’s.

_None of us even knew that. None of us knew even what had become of our gods themselves._

_Why is that?_

_Our progenitors, we’re told, were Thirteen Primes. Forged to battle Unicron._

_All of us their descendants, and Unicron the Great Destroyer. Bringer of Chaos, and endings, and war, and death._

_But why?_

He’d met Unicron. Seen his hate, his rage, his yearning to consume and to destroy.

And yet – how different was that from his own need to tear down the world that had shackled him?

_Who did the Cybertronians who built an empire really worship? And why did it fall?_

But this was only speculation. It couldn’t be anything more. Not with scraps of information, faint hints of lives lost and great deeds performed, only to be forgotten.

Megatron had no love or reverence for gods. But had his people lost that too?

The barbs at his shoulders twitched – reminder of the wings he’d had, and lost. They’d taken those too. Why should a mech have wings, if he was needed in the mines? Why should he feel the wind of Cybertron’s skies, when he was needed to excavate its core instead?

He shifted, uncomfortable. His armor felt heavy.

He rarely minded it. A thick frame was as useful in the Pits of Kaon as it was in the mines. And more useful still, in times of war.

But right now –

_Even my frame is not what it should have been. They made me a beast.  
I am great – I rule a world now. Reforged in the image I gave it._

_They made a beast of me. And I won this. By right of war and right of flame._

He looked down at the datapad. His processor throbbed anew. The glyphs were fire, fire and burning, and their secrets were sacred.

He’d earned his right to them, and he would have them.

But not now. His optics dimmed.

He looked out a window. The city shone, just as his lowly little table did. A world reborn.

_Reforged in the image I gave it,_ he thought again.

_But what greater things might I have imagined, if my kind had not lost everything?_


End file.
